The Rainbow Tulip

by Pat Mora

Hardcover, 1999

Status

Available

Call number

372

Genres

Children's Books

Collection

Your library

Publication

Viking Juvenile (1999), 32 pages

Description

A Mexican-American first-grader experiences the difficulties and pleasures of being different when she wears a tulip costume with all the colors of the rainbow for the school May Day parade.

User reviews

LibraryThing member wturnbull06

This book is a good example of realistic fiction becasue it tell the story of the stuggle a girl has with her family being different then other families around.
Charaterization: Stella is a round dynamic character because you know a lot about how she feels about things and she changes from not

wanting to be different to understanding that there are hard parts about being different but its not always bad.
Media:Paint

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6 more

LibraryThing member TeamPat

The Rainbow Tulip by Pat Mora, Illustrated by Elizabeth Sayles is a delightful story of a young Mexican-American child Estelita (Stella). Stella's 1st grade class is having a May Day parade and all the children must wear tulip costumes. Stella chooses to highlight her diversity by wearing not just

a solid color tulip costume, but a rainbow tulip costume. The story discuses the pros and cons (the sweet and sour) of diversity and coming from a multi-cultural, bi-lingual home. The watercolor illustrations enhance the sweetness of the story and the gentleness of the relationship between Stella and her Mama and Stella and her teacher. This story is based on the author's mother's life and her own tulip parade on the Mexican-American Border.

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LibraryThing member lnpowers

I believe this story does a good job to show the ways that children of immagrants to the United States can feel torn between two worlds. This book used words in Spanish to show Estelita's home life and culture.

This book could be used with a library program which talks about hispanic culture and

struggle of first generation Americans.

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LibraryThing member dbcollin

The Rainbow Tulip tells the story of how young Estilita, the child of Mexican immigrants to the U.S., dealt with living in two different worlds that could not meet due to language barriers. Living in a Spanish-only speaking household and having a teacher that only speaks English makes her the only

one that understands what each are saying. I would highly recommend this book for lessons in cultural diversity.

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LibraryThing member AbigailAdams26

Estelita - or Stella, as she was known at school - loved both her quiet home life, with her gentle mother and book-reading father, and her livelier school (and after-school) life, playing with her friends, and helping her teacher. Speaking Spanish at home, with her Mexican immigrant family, and

English at school, with her American friends, she was always aware of the differences that set her apart, but that awareness reached a critical point during her class's celebration of May Day, when she was the only girl dressed in a multi-colored tulip costume, and her mother was the only parent unable to communicate with the teacher, and with the other parents.

Based upon the childhood experiences of Pat Mora's mother, whose parents immigrated from Mexico to El Paso, Texas in 1910, The Rainbow Tulip is a book that sensitively addresses themes - feeling different, being bilingual - that will be very familiar to children of immigrants. I really appreciated the fact that Estelita/Stella was depicted as a happy, well-adjusted child, and that her feelings about being different from her peers were quite mixed: alternately ashamed and proud. The narrative felt very true to life, as a result, and will have relevance for the widest range of readers. The accompanying illustrations by Elizabeth Sayles are soft and appealing, emphasizing the emotional undercurrent of each scene. All in all, a solidly engaging story, recommended to children from immigrant and bilingual homes, or to young readers interested in the immigrant experience.

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LibraryThing member TPicou

The Rainbow Tulip was a book about a little girl who did not fit in with her classmates. Her family were hispanic and acted differently from the other children's families. There was a spring play and the girls had to dress up as tulips. The little girl wanted to be a rainbow tulip and got

embarrassed when she showed up to school a lot more colorful than the other girls. She ended up embracing the fact that her tulip dress was different (like her family), and everyone loved it. This book can be read to all ages, and the lesson that can be learned is to embrace that you're different.

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LibraryThing member cwierz2

This fictional story is about a young girl, Stella, who knows that because of her Mexican heritage she is not the same as the other children in school. She appreciated her culture and background but sometimes finds it hard that she isn’t the same as everyone else. Stella eventually realizes that

it’s okay to be different. This would be a good story for students in grades 3-5. This inspiring story discusses diversity and accepting the fact that being different makes you special.

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